


Too Late

by KagamiSorciere



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst Train, F/M, Pining, but still the angst has its place, fair warning, not a happy ending for our trash son, unfulfilled pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-04 22:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12781044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KagamiSorciere/pseuds/KagamiSorciere
Summary: He has to watch as she leaves, watch as she goes into the arms of someone else. But it began before he ever arrived. He's simply too late.





	Too Late

He passes her in the base corridor. He smiles, but she doesn’t see.

And just like that he knows it’s going to be one of those days.

Some days he can handle it, the distance. But two days ago she’d been out on a mission and yesterday was spent locked in debriefings.

Sometimes she saw him, but today….

The distance she kept between them strained him. And unlike times in the past, this other, different kind of strain was new and fresh and _painful_.

He watched as she walked past, arm locked with _his_.

Ben never regretted not killing a man once in his clutches more.

To have killed him before they’d ever met. Killed him before she could miss him and blame him for it.

He’d have been just another faceless statistic- safely anonymous to The Girl and one less thing she could blame him for.

Ben loved her. In the end, he’d left the Order for her. And she’d welcomed him, with open arms, and for a moment, just that one moment, he thought….he thought everything would be ok.

But when he swiftly became her shadow, rested his hand lightly against her back, guided her casually with his fingers, he learned that not even a tether in the Force was enough to convince her to be with him.

Like he said on that first day, torn and bloodied, on his knees at her feet with his shattered helmet at his side, he’d work to be worthy of her- he’d never stop trying. And she’d smiled. That sad smile. And she’d nodded.

“I know,” she had whispered.

But it only took a week before realizing what was amiss, before finally being shown the cause for her reticence, for her stiffening whenever he came up to her side.

_The Pilot._

Soon after their acquaintance it had begun, he heard- two damaged, distraught souls that decided to cling to each other physically until it slowly became emotionally as well.

His heart squeezed.

_“Rey, the Force, it…I can_ see _into your_ soul. _I can’t watch when he—“_ he choked back the tears. _“What can I do to win you?”_

….that sad smile.

_“Ben,”_ her voice soft, beseeching. _“I am not something to be won.”_

He knew he’d ruined it. It wasn’t what he’d meant but he was never good with words. Never good at putting the intricacies of his feelings into phrasings that adequately conveyed the depth he was desperate to communicate. It’s why his mother never quite understood when things went wrong. It’s why she had rested her hand on his shoulder before turning her back and walking away.

A tether in the Force wasn’t enough, in her mind, to keep them bound.

And he was at a loss to think of what else in the universe could possibly be greater than that?

When he sees her in the maintenance bay, she calls to him, and like the desperate thing he’s now become, he smiles easily and goes to her. Every word she speaks, he devours. Every twist of her lips, raise of her brows. He will take anything she would give him, and he would scrape and salvage what was left of the pleasant personality he never possessed to meet her enthusiasm as best he could. So that she would like him.

In these moments, the pain was slightly less. Blessed reprieves he thanked the old gods for- tiny, minuscule mercies that he greedily drank. Because she spoke to him, and sometimes, if he was very, very lucky, she would rest her hand on his arm and he knew she knew she risked _feeling_ the static of two halves meeting. It’s why the contact was never for long.

The rejection in the removal of her hand was a pain he suffered because it meant she’d put her hand there to begin with.

And sometimes he wondered if she felt any of it, too. If even a tiny part of her ached for him like he bled like a gaping wound for her. And every time he searched her face for some sign, some _hint_ that she, too, might hide deep inside herself some atom of feeling beyond friendship for him, as if on cue The Pilot would arrive, and off she’d go- smiles and waves and laughter.

It hurt. It hurt that he never even stood a chance. And maybe if he’d known, maybe he would have never…no, no, he’d do it all again.

If only for the rare brushes of her skin.

And her sad smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> the author has been going through some shit, so I guess you'll go through it, too.


End file.
